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Friday, November 21, 2014

Accessibility Worth Sharing (Part 2!)

Hey everyone! Did you check out last week's post? If not, you should give it a look after you've
finished up here.

I left you all with what is undoubtedly
the mots suspenseful cliff hanger ending known to mankind (or at the
very least, to the MHKC blog). Haben Girma's TEDx talk was
everything you might expect from a TEDx talk given by a disability
rights attorney who is a member of the disabled community herself:
thought provoking, insightful, inspiring, and as promised by TED,
worth sharing.

But the problem with this talk was
that, worth sharing though it may be, the very people whose rights
are discussed were unable to access the video. In an interview with
Nina Strochlic of The Daily Beast, Girma says that she feels
that, thanks to exponential advances in communication technology,
there is little she cannot do as a Deaf-Blind person. However, many
have not adapted to these changes, especially when it comes to making
the internet an accessible place.

“A lot of services and businesses are
moving online,” says Girma, “and if they don't provide access to
people with disabilities, it destroys many opportunities. It harms
our right to live in this world as equals.”

Girma has been fighting to change that.
Her current push to get TEDx to caption their videos was prompted by
her own experience giving a TEDx talk in January this year. Prior to
giving her speech, Girma was told by the organization to watch a
video by TED's founder called “What Makes a Great Talk, Great.”
However, there were no captions, which meant her translation software
could not translate the talk into braille.

So she looked at other TEDx talks.
While official TED talks are all captioned, hardly any—six
percent—of the TEDx talks were. Since her talk was about disability
rights and equality advocacy, she requested that it be captioned. It
wasn't until April, after a lot of coercion, that captions were
added.

“It's a talk by a deaf person about
access for people with disabilities. Deaf and hard of hearing who
wanted to view it could not get access to the talk. It was
ridiculous.”

Girma has since requested that TEDx
caption their videos and got a lackluster response. A TED
spokesperson said that the official TED talks are captioned, but to
do so for the TEDx talks would be impossible.

“These events have generated more
than 50,000 talks in 40-plus languages. It would not be feasible for
TED, as a small non-profit organization, to provide transcription—and
English-language translation—for each of those videos.”

But Girma says it's not just about
being able to watch TED videos; it's about following the law.

“To the extent they can afford and
have ability to provide captions, they need to. They're legally
required to,” she says. “We're interested in reasonable
accommodations and whatever's commercially reasonable. We're not
trying to make them go bankrupt.”

She knows that legal action may be
required, but she is also working on a preventative front by teaching
programmers how to provide access for the disabled community on their
websites.

Now, if you haven't watched Haben
Girma's talk that started it all, go take a look! What do you think?